(no subject)

[camwyn]

Another way you know you're me:

The mental argument of the day with yourself contains the line, "There's no such thing as whole wheat lembas!", and shortly thereafter includes a comment to the effect of, "Hmm, I'd better clarify a whole bunch of butter as long as I'm making this- now where's the waffle iron?"

Comments

[camwyn]

Well, whole wheat lembas really wouldn't work, mostly because the bran present in whole wheat flour would cut through whatever light gluten had been formed and result in a remarkably dense texture inconsistent with things Elvish. I mean, let's face it, if anyone exists who refines all their stuff- even their flour- it's Elves. As for lembas made from wheat in general, I've worked with rye flour and flours made from other grains before; you couldn't get a waybread answering to lembas' description from millet, barley, rye, or anything else but refined wheat.

Unless...

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Unless the Elves had access to an entirely different bread grain which is now lost to us since the Last Ship sailed. ;)

Re: Unless...

[camwyn]

Entirely possible, since the Numenoreans were described as educating the men of Middle-earth in the planting of 'corn', which under the usage of Tolkien's day referred to 'pretty much any grain crop used for human consumption really, except that dreadful stuff on cobs, that's maize and only pigs, Americans and Portuguese willingly eat it'. So we have no real way of knowing whether even the Numenoreans had wheat as we know it, let alone the Elves.

But King Arthur bread flour (13-14% protein by weight) will do in a trice when you haven't got semolina (14%) or elven-grain, I think.

Re: Unless...

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, Elven flour may not have been made from any relative of grain as we know it. After all, grains require a considerable amount of cleared land to grow and the Galadrim (lembas bakers extraordinare) didn't seem to have much, if any in Lothlorien. What do you want to bet that lembas flour was made from some kind of nut? Mallorn nuts, maybe? We know from ROTK that the Party Field mallorn was grown from a nut Sam found in the box of earth Galadriel gave him.

Re: Unless...

[camwyn]

Well, I wouldn't be overly surprised if it were at least partly nut-based, but let me check something... *flips through Silm, checks Encyclopedia of Arda* Yeah. Okay. The recipe originated with Melian of Doriath, which was, again, a forest kingdom. And according to my copy of FOTR:

"[Lembas] was mostly in the form of very thin cakes, made of a meal that was baked a light brown on the outside, and inside was the colour of cream... [Gimli] broke off a crisp corner and nibbled at it... 'Why, it is better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings!'... 'The cakes will keep sweet for many many days, if they are unbroken and left in their leaf-wrappings, as we have brought them.'"

So here's what we know for sure:

1. Lembas has to be produced by means available to elves who live in forest country. Granted, they may import flour from somewhere else, but it's unlikely there was much involved in the original recipe given the difficulty of getting into and out of Doriath.
2. The majority of ingredients used in it are pale, which rules out rye and most whole grains. If nuts are involved, they're almost certainly dehusked and blanched, so it's probably not hazelnuts given the notorious difficulty of getting the husks off.
3. The stuff cooks up crisp and thin; it's probably got a fair amount of some kind of fat to it, too. Long keeping is characteristic of breads and quick-breads containing fat; low-fat breads go stale very quickly.
4. It's sweet, and better than honey-intensive cakes. Given the extreme unlikelihood of access to sugar cane in the forests of Doriath, this implies the use of either honey or tree sap.

Potentially, this could mean that lembas are, in fact, made with maple syrup, but to comply with the colour requirements it would have to be Grade A rather than grades B or C, which are more commonly used in baking. (The grading is not done on quality, but on colour- the darker the syrup, the further along in the alphabet it gets graded.) It does seem to be consistent with nutmeal, though. It's unlikely to have been acorns, given the need to leach the bitterness from them before use. Given the likely climate of Doriath, the nuts used could be mallorn, pine, walnut, or chestnut- possibly others, I'm not up on my nut-bearing trees. Which is why I'm rather glad that the recipe I found calls for almonds; it's probably going to be at least a little closer in texture...

oy. Food geekery and Tolkien geekery. I'm so bloody doomed.

Re: Unless...

[drharper.livejournal.com]

oy. Food geekery and Tolkien geekery. I'm so bloody doomed.


*snickers madly*

We're both doomed. Seeing we have an absence of mallorn nuts to experiment with, I would propose trying almond flour. Almonds make a light and relatively sweet flour when ground. Given, almonds generally require a milder climate than Doriath's latitude implies, but elves seem to be masters manipulating plant growth and probably can do some minor tweeking to the weather within their domains.